The discovery of the world’s oldest fire

The cave was first excavated in the 1940s, when early finds revealed unusually deep cultural deposits. Long-term programmes under Peter Beaumont from the 1970s established its extraordinary stratigraphic depth and continental importance. The breakthrough discovery came in 2012 when Francesco Berna and colleagues used Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (FTIR) to analyse materials from a layer dated to approximately 1 million years ago — a level associated with Acheulean-style stone tools and therefore with Homo erectus or an early form of Homo heidelbergensis. They identified fragments of burned bone, plant ash, and heat-altered flint inside the sheltered interior of the cave rather than near its entrance or on an exterior scatter zone — evidence interpreted as hearths deliberately maintained within a domestic shelter. This finding pushed back the accepted date of controlled fire use from the c. 400,000-year benchmark established by Qesem Cave (Israel) and Beeches Pit (England) to approximately 1 million years ago. A 2026 re-analysis of Wonderwerk deposits extended the claim further, suggesting fire may have been used as early as 1.79 million years ago, when early hominins likely tended naturally occurring wildfires rather than producing fire independently.